An illustrator is a graphic artist who specializes in enhancing written text by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, or the illustration may be intended for entertainment, as in greeting cards, or cover art or interior art for books and magazines, or for advertisement, as on posters.

Most contemporary illustrators make their living creating artwork for use in advertising, newspapers and magazines. Pen and ink and airbrush artists traditionally dominated this realm.

Computers dramatically changed the industry, and today computers are used to produce most of the commercial illustrations. The most commonly used computer applications are Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Corel Painter is popular with artists desiring in a traditional media style. Also gaining popularity are 3D computer graphics programs.

However, traditional illustration techniques are still popular, particularly in the field of book illustration. Watercolor, oil painting, pastels, wood-engraving, linoleum cuts, and pen and ink are some of the techniques used by successful exponents of the art.

• Scientific illustrators: they create illustrations that represent visually scientific concepts. They can, for example, create illustrations from bones and fossils found by palentologists, or works showing animals that are difficult to photograph. Some of these illustrations are used by museums to spark the interest of little children. Most of the scientific illustrations are part of a larger field known as information graphics.
• Medical illustrators: they create information graphics about human anatomy. Their work is the result of many years of artistic and medical training.

Related links

• List of illustrators
• List of 3D Artists
• Cartoonists
• Graphic designers
• Painters
• Visualizer
• Marker Rendering
• Airbrush Artist
• Storyboard Artist

Societies and Organizations

• Society of Illustrators
• San Francisco Society of Illustrators
• Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles
• The Association of Illustrators
• The Illustrators Partnership of America
• AIIQ - l’Association des Illustrateurs et Illustratrices du Québec

Illustrators | Visual arts occupations | Graphic design | Illustration

Illustrator | Illustraator | Illustrateur | Illustrator | イラストレーター | Illustratør | Illustratör | 插畫家